Lost Fic (Sort of): 16 Reasons to Love Jack Shephard
Title: 16 Reasons To Love Jack Shephard
Character: Jack (Shades of Jack/Kate, Jack/Juliet, Jack/Sarah, and Jack/Sawyer)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: This was written for today’s queen alliecat8 who requested Jack love. I humbly offer this, it’s not quite a fic but more like elaborations on sixteen reasons why I love Jack more often than not. Some of these I can offer no proof of, other than in my own addled brain I think of them as canon. I hope they are to your liking.
1. The day he got his very first black eye, he walked into his father’s office having resigned himself to a lecture. His father sat in his chair, water dripping from his cooling glass and told his son that he shouldn’t have gotten involved, that he was lesser because he stood up for his friend when he knew it was a pointless gesture. His father seemed to agree with the boy who gave him the black eye---he should have stayed down.
Jack stayed silent as he listened to his father’s words, but he felt defiance rising in his chest that day. He knew what he had done was right. If he was given a choice he would always choose to stand.
2. He saw something in Juliet Burke, something that made him trust her when everything in him told him he was being a fool. She was one of them after all. But he saw her desperation; saw that she hated Benjamin Linus more than he ever could and he saw that she was worth saving. And he tried to save her damnit, he tried.
3. He said he took flying lessons to piss off his father, but he really did it to see what it was like to feel free. When he got up in the air he expected a lightness to come, and it did in a way, but it brought him no satisfaction. He found that he needed his burdens that he wasn’t one for running…or flying as it was.
The day he stopped taking flying lessons was the day he was accepted to med school. After he opened the letter he couldn’t stop grinning for a week.
4. He didn’t like to admit it, but he loved playing games with Sawyer (and not just because he always won.)
5. He didn’t relish the idea of being the leader, but they were looking to him and he never did like to let people down. He waited for someone else to take the mantle, there were certainly other candidates. But each of them---Kate, Locke, Sayid---kept coming to him instead. So he gave the rousing speeches, made the hard choices, kept as many of them alive for as long as he could and even if it wasn’t enough, it was something.
6. The day he saw Sarah wiggle her toes was the proudest moment of his life. She was the first impossible thing he ever believed in.
7. When he read bedtime stories to Aaron he felt like a better man than he was, but he couldn’t hold onto that feeling when he knew his whole life was built on a lie.
8. The first time Kate Austen kissed him, she was crying. She pulled away from him and she ran. Most men would have stopped chasing her then, most men would have said she was more trouble than she was worth, but Jack Shephard is not most men. He loved her then, just like he loves her now. He loved her when she hurt him and he loves her when he hurts her back. The whole damn thing is messy and stupid and it hurts like hell and sometimes he thinks the only way to make it stop is to make it never happen at all.
But in his heart he knows that won’t make it stop either. He’ll love her until the day he dies. That’s just the kind of man he is.
9. When he found Charlie hanging in the jungle he never once let himself accept the idea that the man was a lost cause. He fought and prayed and slammed his fist into Charlie’s chest. He didn’t stop until his friend took one gasping breath of air and Jack knew he was alive.
10. At some point every man has to decide whether to throw their lot in with science or faith. The man who chooses faith, like John Locke, chooses a lifetime of believing without seeing, a lifetime of blindly hoping that they are on the right path.
Men like Jack choose science because they can see the results, the mechanisms. The wisest men know that science is its own faith. Men like Locke look to gods to save them; men like Jack know that they have the ability to save themselves.
11. He’s an awfully good shot for a spinal surgeon.
12. He wonders what his life would have been like if he had known he had a little sister. He imagines growing up with Claire, scaring off her boyfriends, complaining about their dad. He imagines inviting her to his wedding and wonders if she would have made a toast.
He likes to believe he would have been a good big brother.
13. When they branded Juliet, he hated every one of those people. He cursed them in his head for their madness and their zealotry. He cursed himself for backing her into a corner, for putting her in a position where she thought her only choice was to kill a man she had known for three years.
He put aloe on her back with careful hands and offered her the only comfort he could from behind the bars of the cage.
14. He thinks Hugo Reyes is the best man he has ever known. He wishes he could be that kind, that joyful, that loving every day of his life.
He doesn’t realize that just recognizing that he wants these things makes him better than most.
15. The day Sawyer told him that his father loved him was the day he knew that no matter what happened between them, no matter how much Sawyer tried to deny it, that he was a good man.
He’ll never tell Sawyer this, but since that day he has always counted him among his friends.
16. He came back for all of the wrong reasons, but that doesn’t change the fact that he came.